Happy 25th birthday, World Wide Web

Two-and-a-half decades ago Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World
Wide Web. It changed the world. This week, to mark the 25th
anniversary of the proposal, we are running a collection of
articles to uncover the past, present and future of the web.

Pioneers write about the Web at 25 FOR
WIRED

"Like the average 25-year-old, the web has been shaped by a vast
array of influences -- in fact, it was built through the efforts of
millions. So this anniversary is for everyone. We should look
proudly on what we've built. And as with most twentysomethings, the
web's full potential is just starting to show. A radically open,
egalitarian and decentralised platform, it is changing the world,
and we are still only scratching the surface of what it can do.
Anyone with an interest in the web's future -- and that's everyone,
everywhere -- has a role in ensuring it achieves all it can."

"I'm increasingly confident that the web will be a central
platform for human creativity for decades. With technologies such
as HTML5 and modern JavaScript, the web can be used to create
almost any kind of application: games, spreadsheets and video. I
expect the web to be built into every new computer-based device and
user interface for the next 50 years."

"The one key thing that will affect the web (and the world) over
the next few years is the incredible explosion of growth in the
internet in the developing world. I carry around with me a Huawei
Ideos smartphone that sells for $50 (£30) in Kenya -- and there are
hundreds of thousands of these in Africa. The boom we've
experienced is now going to happen there."

"Advancements in computing power and data storage have made
wholesale surveillance possible. But they've also made leaking
possible, which will keep organisations worrying about getting
caught over any wrongdoing. The future of the web is hanging in the
balance between parties that want to keep us under surveillance and
parties that want to reveal the nature of such surveillance. Both
parties have the data revolution on their side."

"We talk about the internet of things; we're going to have the
internet of microbes and people and biology. We're going to create
networks of biological things. Add nanotech and little micro
machines, and the way those things communicate with each other will
be influenced by the way that we're architecting the internet.
We're making robots that create biology; biology that creates
robots; and hybrids of all of them -- and they need to
communicate."

Nigel ShadboltHead of Web and Internet Science Group at the
University of Southampton and chair and cofounder of the Open Data
Institute

"For me, the most unexpected part of the web's evolution is the
degree to which it has ushered in a new kind of AI -- augmented
intelligence. The web provides millisecond access to vast amounts
of knowledge, which makes us more capable."

Keren ElazariSecurity specialist and industry analyst with GigaOM
Research

"Given the history of humanity thus far, the internet will not
be a hive of collaboration, co-operation and enhanced democracy. It
has the potential to divide us and destroy our
world. Proponents of the Singularity speak of an impending
time when everyone uploads their minds into the cloud, and man and
machine evolve into one hyperconnected being. But why wait? Most of
us are already cyborgs anyway, relying on technology for much of
our intellectual, social, biological and cultural endeavours."

Vint CerfCo-chair of Campus Party and a cofounder of the
Internet Society

"The greatest surprise for me, in terms of public engagement in
the use of the internet and especially the web, was the massive
influx of content and the rapidly growing population of self-taught
webmasters. Most content creators were motivated by the
satisfaction that the information they shared was useful to
someone. Of course, the avalanche of content flowing into the
internet led to the need for ways to discover information of
interest, which led to the invention of search tools."

"The evolution of the web should correspond to the trends
emerging in the mobile ecosystem. On mobile, there is a demand for
immediacy and concise presentation. I believe the expectation of
live, updated snippets of information will propagate to the web.
These snippets might be "card-like", modular objects, from text to
images, videos, infographs and maps."

"The internet's adolescence was filled with late nights, loud
music, junk food, indiscriminate dating and trying to figure out
what it wanted to be when it grew up. Well, now it's grown up, and
what it grew up to be is a place where our online and our offline
lives have merged. The qualities we care most about offline are
being increasingly reflected in our experiences online."

Wired.co.uk reporters recall their first web
experiences

It's 1995. I've just typed "sex" into an web chat room and
thought I was about to be arrested for it. "There are people who
watch what you say on here!" my friend Michael shouted, as my
panicked fingers departed his father's computer keyboard and he
ripped the modem cable out of the telephone socket. "You can't say
'sex' in a chat room!"

My earliest experiences of the web are intrinsically entwined
with my TV-watching and magazine-reading habits. All of a sudden,
Live and Kicking was telling me to head to the CBBC website to
enter competitions and presenters seems to spend half their screen
time spelling out mysterious URLs.

Sharing a 25th birth year with the web, my earliest memories of
it are being rapidly degraded. There are the obvious experiences
that everyone who grew up in the 90s will recall, of course --
dubious page design, the gaudy colours, the pleasurable screech of
a connecting modem. But most of my first browsing memories, after
negotiating the AOL startup page, were limited.

My first experience of the web was in an IT class in around
1995. Access was strictly rationed as if it might somehow run out.
Google hadn't launched its search engine; we used Lycos, Excite,
Yahoo and Altavista.

"Move over," my brother said, shoving me to one side. "What are
you both looking at?" asked my father from one chair over. Privacy
might be particularly on topic right now, but 15 years ago I wasn't
worried about Facebook breaching my data protection rights or the
NSA snooping through my files. My concern was a little more
tangible -- and breathing down my neck.

"Don't pick up the phone, I'm online!" This panicked cry was all
too familiar in the mid 90s -- a simpler time of dial-up modems,
Netscape and mIRC. At the gentle age of nine I was already
something of an addict. My parent's house -- specifically the tiny
phone cupboard located under the stairs in which I had to connect a
short and vaguely emasculating 4-inch network cable -- was woefully
inadequate for my big plans to discuss "virii" (forgive me) and why
my iframes weren't working on my soon to be groundbreaking tripod
website (I still don't know).